Wednesday, December 29, 2010

The selective release of around a quarter million US State Department cables, some of them redacted after screening by corporate media entities such asThe New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel,and Le Monde, among others, comes at a time when there are calls by governments, including officials of the Obama administration, to restrict information content on the Internet.

In fact, the release of the State Department cables may have served as a digital “9/11,” an event that has spurred on the agenda of neo-conservatives who continue to exercise influence outside and within the Obama administration to bring about total government control of the flow of information in cyberspace.

The CIA has established a Wikileaks Task Force, or “WTF,” at CIA headquarters to examine the effects of the Wikileaks cable release. However, the CIA was relatively unaffected by the Wikileaks releases, but the WTF will, nevertheless, conduct a thorough review and present their findings to senior agency officials. The CIA stated its special task force is made up of seasoned officers.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

...To say that government must keep secrets is not to say that all government secrets must be kept.

Even Pentagon officials and Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted that none of WikiLeaks' revelations do anything to compromise national security or endanger American lives, but they have wreaked havoc on political life in Washington, D.C. Apparently, Americans are not supposed to know that Saudi Arabia has been encouraging the U.S. to take military action against Iran behind-the-scenes. But if we end up going to war with Iran shouldn't it be in America's national interest, and not simply as a subcontractor for another country? Fox News' Judith Miller asks, "Why should Americans not know that Arab states, often at the top level, have been urging Washington to take military or other drastic action against Iran, while they publicly oppose such action?"

And when did conservatives become so protective of Hillary Clinton? What happened to the days of the "Stop Hillary Express," when right-wing talk radio portrayed the former first lady as Satan and discussed all the devious ways in which, if in power, she might conspire to bring down the entire country? When WikiLeaks revealed that Secretary of State Clinton tried to obtain DNA samples, fingerprints, credit card numbers, and other private information belonging to United Nations officials, we learned that Clinton's style was every bit as mafia-esque as her conservative critics once warned. Yet, conservatives now attack WikiLeaks for revealing what they once feared.

It should also be remembered that the same conservatives now calling for Assange's head either ignored or were sympathetic to Lewis "Scooter" Libby's outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, allegedly at the Bush administration's behest. Plame's outing was arguably a far greater threat to our national security than anything that has been released by WikiLeaks.

Since 1980 the Republican Party has morphed from a simple, fiscally conservative, business and military-oriented political party into something completely different. The Republican Party has become the literal political arm of Corporate America and the Super-rich.

The problem with this is quite obvious. The Super-rich and the huge corporations, like the health insurance corporations, for example, have objectives that relate directly to their stockholders. If, for example, a company can pollute and get a away with it, it may add considerably to their profits. But it may not be good for American society as a whole. In fact it may be bad or even very bad for society.

So, while one party at one time would favor business or the wealthy somewhat, today the Republican Party, now the party of Neoconservatives…Neocons…has literally become the ideological political arm, the executor of policy and legislation for large international corporations, billionaires, the inheritors of great wealth, the military brass hats…not the soldiers…and of the Right Wing.

And what does that mean? It means that the Neoconservative Republican Party turns every issue into a partisan issue. How, they ask, will this issue affect my supporters, the corporations? If alternative energy, for example, will work against the major oil corporations, then the Neocon Republicans are against it. As the political arm of the corporations, they, too, are beholden to the stockholders, not the People.

Sunday, December 26, 2010

This is typical of neoconservative aggression against Iran: It’s intellectually dishonest, utterly lacking in empathy, short-sighted, sloppy and hypocritical.

Perhaps on his way to hiking in the West Bank, or whatever he does for vacation, young neoconservative upstart cum Israel government PR adviser cum Israel lobbyist cum partisan political operative Noah Pollak was in the Athens airport, where he snapped this picture of an advertisement for the bank HSBC:

Along with this picture, Pollak tweeted:

I saw this HSBC ad today at the Athens airport. It says that Iran treats women better than US. Truly outrageous.Actually, that’s not what the ad says (intellectually dishonest). It says that 25 percent of Iranian films are made by women, whereas four percent of American films are made by women. Do those statistics surprise you? Well, that’s the point, not some overarching statement about whether women are treated better in the United States or Iran. That much is clear from the full ad.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Neocon Bolton Renews Call for Israel to Bomb Iran Kurt Nimmo www.infowars.com www.prisonplanet.tv August 17, 2010 nstead of a business deal, Bolton characterizes the Russian effort as an excuse to “stick a thumb in America’s eye.” Last Friday the former interim UN ambassador during the Bush administration went on Fox News and warned that if Israel did not conduct a bombing raid against Iran’s nuclear energy program within a few days, the window of opportunity would be lost. Bolton made his comment following a report last week that Russia will begin loading nuclear fuel at Iran’s Bushehr reactor on July 21. “Once that uranium, once those fuel rods are very close to the reactor, certainly once they’re in the reactor, attacking it means a release of radiation, no question about it,” the AFP reports Bolton as saying today. “So if Israel is going to do anything against Bushehr it has to move in the next eight days.” On August 15, Infowars.com reported on comments made by Sergei Novikov, a spokesman for Rosatom, the Russian Energy State Nuclear Corp. “The fuel will be loaded on Aug 21. This is the start of the physical launch” of the reactor, he said. “From that moment the Bushehr plant will be officially considered a nuclear-energy installation.” Russia is currently operating under a $1 billion contract with Iran and has worked for over a decade on the reactor. Instead of a business deal, Bolton characterizes the Russian effort as an excuse to “stick a thumb in America’s eye …

Veterans and servicemen and women: Beware of the for-profit college funneling money into the leading neocon daily advocating for war. Send the troops away is the near-constant editorial cry of this chicken-hawk, pro-Israel paper.

This summer I was flabbergasted by the sudden emergence of the proposed New York “mosque” as a major national issue. It seemed to be a spontaneous uprising of sentiment, mysteriously appearing nine years after 9/11. What could explain this bizarre eruption of Islamophobia?

Well, as this article explains in detail, there was nothing “spontaneous” about the eruption of this issue. It had been orchestrated by the neoconservatives for years before. I had never heard of of the controversies over the Islamic Society of Boston’s Cultural Center or the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn, since those never reached critical national exposure. But those two Islamophobic campaigns were, in Max Blumenthal’s words, “more about movement building than success, no less national security.”

In other words, a conspiracy. A conspiracy to build a movement. Like the Conservative Conspiracy in which I was involved in the late 1950s. We weren’t purposely “secret.” It was just that nobody was paying attention to us—yet.

So, my question is, what are they planning next, after their great success with the “World Trade Center Mosque” issue?

Let me suggest one possible answer, and I welcome your comments. I think their next goal is the effective takeover of the Tea Party movement. How else explain neocons like Bill Kristol jumping aboard that ship—they’ve never been small-government types before—and the emergence of Sarah Palin as the alleged “leader” of the movement? After all, to the neocons, domestic issues are negotiable; Israel (meaning the Likud) is not.

P.S. Another question I’ve always had is, how do people like David Horowitz have so much money? You’ll find the answer to that question in this article too. While LewRockwell.com and The American Conservative struggle for existence, the neocons have untold millions at their disposal.

Monday, December 20, 2010

Four days ago Fair Game director Doug Liman responded to a falsehood-filled attack on his film's credibility by former N.Y. Times reporter and alleged neocon mouthpiece Judith Miller, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal on 12.9. Liman also alludes to a 12.3 Washington Post editorial, also penned with a dimissive and inaccurate neocon conviction, that attacked his film.

Judith Miller demonstrated in her recent WSJ story about my film, Fair Game, the same cavalier attitude towards the facts that led to her departure from The New York Times in disgrace. And we should never forget that Scooter Libby outed Valerie Plame to Miller in June 2003 -- more than two weeks before Richard Armitage outed Plame to Novak. Somehow Miller neglected to mention that in her op-ed piece.

So although neither Miller nor Armitage are in the film Fair Game, both of them were involved in the whole sorry episode up to their eyeballs. Actually, I would have loved to have included Richard Armitage, Dick Cheney and others in Fair Game, had Scooter Libby not obstructed the investigation, for which a unanimous jury convicted him on five serious counts with jail sentences.

America’s neocons have to take credit for a leadership role in both wars and rumors of wars. Did Jesus Christ foresee the mindset and behavior of America’s neocons?

The Iraqi war is legendary in the annals of war history. It is the only war in recent memory that either had no reason for its start or a false reason for its start. Would the truth about its start set somebody free or perhaps threaten somebody’s freedom?

Every effect is supposed to have a cause. The Iraq war was an effect – therefore it was supposed to have a cause? But the cause never made it into America’s “current events” news pool. So if polls queried America’s population on the cause of the Iraq war, another high ranking failing score would likely happen. Already America has seen information failures polled as high as 86% and 66%. A poll on the reason for the start of the Iraq war would likely see a failure rate as high as 100%.

Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum just posted pure pro-Israel propaganda on his blog, Frum Forum. In it he attempts to outline why a UN Security Council recognition of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders would be counterproductive.

First, he disingenuously blames the failure of the latest rounds of peace talks on the Palestinians, and then concludes that for the UN to recognize a Palestinian state would be tantamount to giving Abbas cover to never speak with Israel again:

From the beginning of the Obama administration, PA President Mahmoud Abbas has refused to negotiate directly with Israel. Indirect discussions have stumbled along without result. Abbas has insisted he cannot talk without a settlement freeze. Then when he gets his settlement freeze, he explains he still cannot talk.

The beauty of the UN approach is that it provides a perfect excuse never to talk to Israel again.

What Frum fails to mention is that the United States government demanded that Israel freeze its illegal settlement expansions. By conveniently omitting this fact he implies that ONLY the Palestinians made such a ‘bold’ demand that Israel stop stealing their land as a sign of good faith in negotiating borders roughly along the 1967 green line (with occasional land swapping).

Saturday, December 18, 2010

AEI and the neocons accuse Assange and wikileaks of being dangerous anarchists, but this is a case of Freudian projection. They are the anarchists. The reason they are so upset is that they believe deeply in the kind of unchecked executive power that is associated with the rise of a globally extended national security state. Empires, global spheres of influence and international affairs operate in an environment of political anarchy. Running an empire requires an army of diplomats and spies who have to strategically manipulate access to information, make opportunistic deals with unsavory foreign rulers, prop up favored puppets and undermine others, all with the threat of military force hanging over the process. The tension between republic and empire has been true since the time of the Romans. Many in the U.S. foreign policy and military establishments believe that public oversight is a nuisance in such operations; indeed, the most hard core imperialists openly contend that they are impossible to reconcile. The foreign policy hard-liners want both untrammeled power to surveill the public and complete insulation from any reciprocal surveillance of their activities.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

So I post regularly on this 912 website. I know most of you are thinking, "why the hell would you do that?" I do it to help spread the Ron Paul liberty message to the Beck/Palin half of the tea party.

There are some others who are awake and provoke critical thought so I'm not alone, But the majority just can't seem to break out of the left-right paradigm mindset.

Here is an example of the uphill battle we are facing as liberty lovers trying to unlock the minds of the sheeple:

Neocon: Allowing a non american to leak our intelligence is not only dangerous, it is absolutely the going to result in AMERICAN casualties as so many men and women who are serving this country will now be compromised! Wikileaks is a disaster, he should be banned from this country and prosecuted!! Keep in mind He is NOT an american therefore not entitled to our rights, our freedoms or our intelligence!

Me:Illegal wars of aggression result in American casualties.

Neocon: Illegal according to who??? The Useless United Nations???? We are attacked...we retaliate...are you an apologist? We have every right to defend out country and our interests...or do you suggest we just sit back and let them take us apart bit by bit??? It was made clear 'With us or Against us"....pretty clear! Aggression? seriously what are we supposed to go over and shake hands...war is war..they bought it here...we gave it back!

Me: According to the CONSTITUTION Kathy.

I'm not going to get into another mind numbing argument with you.

As for wikileaks, here are 9 questions you may want to ponder.

Number 1: Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?

Number 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?

Number 3: Why is the hostility directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?

Number 4: Are we getting our moneys worth of the 80 Billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?

Number 5: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?

Number 6: If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?

Number 7: Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?

Number 8: Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?

Number 9: Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?

Neocon:1. Research it and find out..there are quite a few reasons!2. There are a milllion way for a Hacker to get info!3. Our governement is wrong, so is Assange, people like you and fed want this info out because you just must know!4. Would you rather not know??? Would your rather just wait for the next attack? or should we just mind our business and be good little americans?5. Lying us into which wars?6. If Assange where an American I would give a crap...but he is not and so therefore....he has no right nor reason to release info that has nothing to do with HIM!7. Could be but I doubt it...If you hate Isreal and think that the Muslim Islamofacists are right then you should get a seat on the UN or a Job at Columbia Useless University!8. YES...If you are an AMERICAN9. I agree!!! But not everything is a conspiracy and didnt Fed tell you its not nice to tattle!

Me: I don't think you answered one of the questions. I'd rather not continue this discussion with you. I said I didn't want to engage in another mind numbing argument and that's exactly what this is degenerating into. My bad.

Lew, the con of FOXNews’s psychiatric attack on Assange is revealed in Ablow’s own self-promoting bio, where he boasts that Ablow himself “has documented…the unmistakable power of personal truth to transform human lives in a broad spectrum of environments…[and he] believes we hold up shields to protect ourselves from the painful truths that, when faced honestly, turn into powerful insights and clear strategies for growth and success.” If it weren’t for his innate neoconservative hatred of liberty, fear of the independent individual, and loathing of pure courage, this inconsequential slave-state psychiatrist would be an avid WikiLeaks supporter.

NeoCon Elliott Abrams doesn’t respect the Constitution See Former CIA Official Exposes Bush Administration Fraud www.youtube.com Flynt Leverett worked as a senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council, the NSC, and he was a CIA analyst. The Bush Administration has committed fraud before. See background information on the fraud committed by the Bush Administration to get us into the Iraq War: The Problem Was Not “Faulty Intelligence,” the Problem Was Dishonestly Selecting And Omitting Intelligence representativepress.blogspot.com Senate Hearing on Iraq Pre-War Intelligence representativepress.blogspot.com US Intelligence About Iraq Didn’t Really Fail, It Was Manipulated representativepress.blogspot.com Beyond all reasonable doubt, the Bush Administration is guilty of the high crime of lying our nation into war. representativepress.blogspot.com

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

There is a widely read new essay at the neocon Jewish Ideas Daily denouncing Christopher Hitchens as an anti-Semite. How sweet comeuppance can be, especially for these two parties that definitely deserve each other. There is much worth noting, however, about how they got there.

It was inevitable, to be sure, that the largely modern Orthodox neoconservative core would clash with an erstwhile ally who expressed his agreement with Voltaire “that Judaism is not just one more religion, but in its way the root of religious evil.” Yet what our author fails to grasp is that what he insists on calling anti-Semitism – a talismanic phrase that he may or may not have noticed gets diminishing returns – is merely Hitchens’ dogged consistency. Hitchens joined the crusade against Islamofascism (how quickly we forget he coined that noxious term) because he was committed to armed progressivism while his leftist comrades had to oppose it because it was being articulated in a Texas drawl. And to his credit, Hitchens is rare in his consistency among the atheist mandarins for being as unsparing to Judaism as to Christianity and Islam.

But of course all this is lost on one who writes shamelessly of “the existence of a Jewish nation in the land of Israel for centuries, its sovereignty ended only by genocide at the hands of Roman legions . . . . and various other significant and notably secular historical facts.” The heart of the matter lies in the somewhat obscure figure of Israel Shahak, whom Hitchens reveres as a “great and serious man” and his antagonist insists was a “barking mad” Jewish anti-Semite.

The United States of America will likely be forced to invade Mexico. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. The question then becomes: What to do with Mexico after we invade it and wipe out the drug cartels (as much as can be). Does the United States merely return Mexico to a nation state of corrupt politicians, failed economic policies, and lawlessness, or do we annex Mexico and turn it into the 51st state?

Ironically, it is American lawlessness, in the form of buying illegal narcotics, that has helped turn Mexico into a state destabilized by violent drug cartels. And merely ending drug prohibition, which would destroy the black market, would go a long way toward giving our southern neighbor space to improve its position.

Post-Nancy conservatives deserve most of the blame for the drug war as it exists today (not that Democrats have been much better). Sadly it seems likely that a lot of rank and file conservatives would sooner invade Mexico than admit defeat in the War on Drugs. Over to you, Rick Perry.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

If you believed that the NeoCons disappeared after the 2008 election, how soon do you forget? With the next round in the never-ending beltway two-step, the Republican leadership readies their hold of the House of Representatives agenda. The Tea Party freshmen promise to bring a breath of fresh air to a stuffy chamber. Time will tell if their pledge of hope will pan out. What is known with certainty is that the entrenched GOP leadership continues with their dedication to the policies that exemplify their NeoCon mindset. So what is a neoconservative?

Monday, December 13, 2010

The real truth, in fact, is that the neoconservatives are not and have never been what they have painted their critics (always fierce) both left and right. The moment is propitious time to look into their political and cultural realities with more coolness, that is not at odds on him ever to those who believe the seriousness not an option.

Newly available is a tool for that purpose, Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea (Paradigm, Boulder [Colorado]). Aside from the ridiculous title (and cover the same), it is a great deal of interpretation.

The lavish C. Bradley Thompson, of Clemson University in South Carolina, and Yaron Brook, the first is more or less a "leaked" by the neocons, the second is the chairman and chief executive dell'Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, California. Their work is great because first of all do everything to condense, in what after all are not even very many pages, a galaxy of thought and huge figures, and (self-) definition elusive (as I said, almost too often the authors). Then as it tries to reel off pretty well for a very significant problem, with the claim of branded as pernicious, even anti-American. Aim the book succeeds, but gives the reader a huge harvest of ideas and materials useful to those who cultivate the whole issue from different perspectives, even opposite. Even a book stubbornly hostile, that is, you can make optimal use, provided it is written, as is that of Thompson and Brook, with extreme seriousness

1. At the core of your book is the notion that neoconservatism is dead. But consider that Politico recently published an analysis of Obama’s Middle East policies in which ten of eleven persons quoted were neocons (the eleventh was a Palestinian). The Washington Post’s editorial page is rapidly becoming a neocon fortress. Is it really time to talk about the “death” of neoconservatism?

2. What do the neocons mean by “governing philosophy,” and how does this affect the way they engage in politics in America?

3. Irving Kristol’s argument for capitalism is, you conclude, remarkably luke-warm. Where do neocons part company with advocates of a pure market economy?

4. You link the neoconservatives closely to the writings of Leo Strauss, and particularly to his book Natural Right and History, which you say “may very well be one of the most profound and deadly philosophic assaults on America ever written.” What do you mean by this?

5. Leo Strauss’s 1933 letter to Karl Löwith, in which he acknowledged his adherence to “fascist, authoritarian, imperial” principles has drawn a lot of attention lately. Strauss adherents treat it as a sort of aberration. Are they right to push back in this way?

6. You suggest that a willingness to prepare for and wage wars lies right at the heart of neoconservatism. Has this affected American foreign policy in the last decade?

The neocons are not known for either their problem detection wisdom nor their problem solution wisdom. And neocon ETHICS VALUES seem strange in an American setting.

It is Un-American to criticize the safety record of BP but it is not Un-American to sell cocaine in minority neighborhoods of Los Angeles, California.

It is Un-American to criticize the safety record of BP but it is not Un-American to attack the country of Iraq – coming away with more oil for BIG OIL. And some would dare Rand Paul and/or Ex-President George W. Bush to visit Iraq and tell the Iraqis to their face, how wonderful the democracy, delivered by the neocons – is.

It is Un-American to criticize the safety record of BP but it is not Un-American for McDonald’s to tell employees who to vote for.

Trying to fool all of the people all of the time seems to be a task the neocons have undertaken. And if one owns enough news sources, and is willing to do much editorializing via bloggers and the like, one can have a significant impact of one’s choice on the “current events” news pool.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

The editorial viewpoint from the whacky Left totally diminishes any valid criticism of crazed NeoCons. Case in point read the below description from The United Voice Of America.

CPAC is a CON-vention for neoCONS. What does this convention consist of ? Well probably allot of the same as the Tea-Klus-Klan consist of. Anti-government, conspiracy theorist, extremist, hypocrites, and under occurrence of hate groups. Why do we even pretend to make a distinction between the Tea Party and the Republicans anyways? They are one and the same. Anyways, Rachel Maddow fact checks these ditto heads false accusations. Know what, Rachel does a good job of it. After reviewing her facts, the only word that came to mind was CPAC FAIL.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

The Pakistani ambassador to the U.S. hosted a fundraiser at his residence for a neoconservative D.C. think-tank, which solicited donations of $5,000 for invitations to the event. But the think-tank, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), didn't bother to tell the Pakistani embassy that the event was a fundraiser or that it was sandwiched in the middle of a two-and-a-half day conference on "Countering the Iranian Threat" put on by the group.

"We didn't know at all that they have done this fundraising," Imran Gardezi, a spokesperson for the Pakistani embassy, told the Middle East Channel. "And neither did they share with us that they would be doing this conference. Very frankly, we didn't know about this conference."

Though the dinner appeared in the paper and online conference programs, FDD president Cliff May insisted that the two were unrelated: "The dinner was separate from the conference but it coincided with the conference. Why? Because many friends of FDD were in town for the conference," he wrote in an e-mail to the Middle East Channel. May conceded that his staff may have failed to notify the Pakistani embassy that the group was in the middle of hosting the conference.

At the "Washington Forum," as the conference was called, fellows and scholars from FDD advocated for escalating measures against the Islamic Republic, ranging from "ratcheting up" sanctions and pressure to U.S. support for regime change and even military strikes against Iran. "Pakistan and Iran are brotherly countries and neighboring countries, brotherly Muslim countries," said Gardezi, citing cooperation between the two countries on a pipeline project. "Anything against Iran is unthinkable for us."

Friday, December 10, 2010

Palin has long wanted to visit Israel, and in a recent Facebook post wishing the Jewish community a Happy Hanukkah she reconfirmed her support for the Jewish state: “Today we should all recommit ourselves to ensuring that the miracle of a Jewish state endures forever. The dreidel is one of the most familiar symbols of Hanukkah, with Hebrew letters on it representing the phrase Nes Gadol Haya Sham—‘a great miracle happened there.’ Indeed a great miracle is still happening there.”

It turns out our government has been lying to us about whether we have troops in Pakistan engaging in combat operations. The Pentagon has said the mission of American soldiers is confined to “training Pakistani forces so that they can in turn train other Pakistani military,” but in fact our forces have been embedded in Pakistani fighting units, giving them electronic data and other support as they kill the enemy.

We know this because of WikiLeaks. It’s also thanks to WikiLeaks that we know about America’s arrangement with the President of Yemen: we kill Yemen-based terrorists and he claims that Yemen is doing the killing.

In these respects, I think, WikiLeaks is doing God’s work. I realize there are tactical rationales for both of these deceptions, but I don’t see them trumping the bedrock right of citizens in a democracy to know when their tax dollars are being used to kill people — especially when those people live in countries we’re not at war with. So, if we’re going to calculate Julian Assange’s net karma, I’d put this stuff on the positive side of the ledger.

I guess I am just used to him doing this and it doesn't surprise me one bit. But for other people, they automatically assume it means "he's against that guy" or something. Anyway, good luck with neoconair. Ironically, they have had their site locked down for the entire year where you're unable to sign up to comment. It's odd.

The article: Is a Peace Movement Finally Awakening? by Sheldon Richman of the Future of Freedom Foundation We know what the New Right is all about: corporate socialism. They call it Big Government Conservatism, and it consists of corporate welfare at home, imperial expansion abroad, and a national security state powered by religious fanaticism worthy of Al-Qaeda. The liberal Left, however, was all but defanged by the election of a black president who talked the liberal talk. But now we know that he walks the neocon walk. Liberals are actually starting to come out of their closets and protest again. Guess what this means? Now that the Great Black Hope has proved to be just another tyrannical Great White Father, a left-wing peace movement has become possible once again. We antiwar libertarians are starting to believe we won't be so lonely for long. Where liberals and libertarians part, of course, is in their opinion of government. Liberals, descending from the social democrats of the 19th and 20th centuries, believe that government can be used as a force for good, a weapon against the oppression of the masses. Libertarians are far more cynical: expansion of government welfare leads inevitably to the supreme corporate welfare of war and empire, or the other way around if the empire wants to buy the masses' loyalty. The supreme statement of the libertarian position comes from early 20th century libertarian Randolph Bourne: "War is the health of the state." But now Obama has shown his true colors. He is indeed bent on destroying America — but on behalf of his real owners: the banksters who lead the New Right and fund the TEA Party. He sold us a bill of goods, you see. The liberals are now a constituency without representation. Some of them are beginning to complain. As the war between the US and Wikileaks escalates, and as an increasingly frustrated US government threatens to abolish freedom of speech and unleash Soviet-style secret police tactics in order to defend the empire and its war policy, they may actually start to realize they may have to take to the streets again, perhaps all the way to the barricades. But until then, antiwar libertarians and socialists will remain the proverbial prophets crying out in the wilderness...

Neoconservatism is a political philosophy that supports using economic and military power to bring liberalism, democracy, and human rights to other countries. In economics, unlike paleoconservatives and libertarians, neoconservatives are generally comfortable with a limited welfare state; and, while rhetorically supportive of free markets, they are willing to interfere for overriding social purposes.

The term neoconservative was used at one time as a criticism against proponents of American modern liberalism who had "moved to the right". Michael Harrington, a democratic socialist, coined the current sense of the term neoconservative in a 1973 Dissent magazine article concerning welfare policy. According to E. J. Dionne, the nascent neoconservatives were driven by "the notion that liberalism" had failed and "no longer knew what it was talking about." The term "neoconservative" was the subject of increased media coverage during the presidency of George W. Bush with particular focus on a perceived neoconservative influence on American foreign policy, as part of the Bush Doctrine. The term neocon is often used as pejorative in this context.

The first major neoconservative to embrace the term, Irving Kristol, was considered a founder of the neoconservative movement. Kristol wrote of his neoconservative views in the 1979 article "Confessions of a True, Self-Confessed 'Neoconservative.'" His ideas have been influential since the 1950s, when he co-founded and edited Encounter magazine. Another source was Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine from 1960 to 1995. By 1982 Podhoretz was calling himself a neoconservative, in a New York Times Magazine article titled "The Neoconservative Anguish over Reagan's Foreign Policy". Kristol's son, William Kristol, founded the neoconservative Project for the New American Century.

A case in point is the sharp contrast between what appear to be core Tea Party beliefs and those of the neoconservatives, the political faction most closely associated with the drive to attack Iraq and a vanguard force in hawkish policy discourse. While some commentators, like former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, have argued that the rise of the Tea Party will lead to a “Jacksonian shift” in foreign policy discourse (led by “heavily armed realists” who scorn multilateralism),[1] the isolationist tendencies of many Tea Partiers would appear to belie such an analysis, and present a direct challenge to the militarist go-it-alone internationalism of the neocons.

Thus far, the neoconservatives appear to be parrying the challenge effectively. The question is, can the neocons, as they have with other political factions in the past, successfully co-opt this new political force in such a way as to make it amenable to their goals?

Since we all know that only Israelis and their neocon supporters in America seek a military attack on Iran's nuclear program, Bahrain must be under the control of neocons: "There was little surprising in Mr. Barak's implicit threat that Israel might attack Iran's nuclear facilities. As a pressure tactic, Israeli officials have been setting such deadlines, and extending them, for years. But six months later it was an Arab leader, the king of Bahrain, who provides the base for the American Fifth Fleet, telling the Americans that the Iranian nuclear program 'must be stopped,' according to another cable. 'The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it,'" he said.

The Saudis, too, are neocons, apparently: The Bahraini king's "plea was shared by many of America's Arab allies, including the powerful King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who according to another cable repeatedly implored Washington to 'cut off the head of the snake' while there was still time."

These include many of the relationships that the neoconservatives who shaped Bush’s foreign policy were most willing to risk. Neocons have often encouraged policies and utterances that threatened relations with Russia and Turkey, as well as China, Iran and so on. Indeed, neoconservatism sometimes seems devoted to exacerbating the world’s major geopolitical fault lines. And now WikiLeaks has advanced the exacerbation. Maybe Assange, when he has time for some fresh conspiracy theorizing, can look into the possibility that neocons have implanted electrodes in his brain.

I don’t know if this change of course would make up for the considerable short-term damage wrought by WikiLeaks — the harm done to fragile and crucial relations with other states, the blowback that even now is starting to well up in Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere. But if it does, then Assange’s initially pro-neocon impact could be dwarfed by his longer-term, more benign influence. And his karma, as I calculate it, would move into positive territory.

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Congress Owned by UnAmerican Foreign Interests

"Conservatives are accustomed to liberals not understanding the zoology of our movement. But the use and abuse of the term 'neoconservative' has exceeded even the high allowance for cliché and ignorance generally afforded to those who write or talk about conservatism from outside the conservative ant farm. In fact, neoconservative has become a Trojan Horse for vast arsenal of ideological attacks and insinuations. For some it means Jewish conservative. For others it means hawk. A few still think it means squishy conservative or ex-liberal. And a few don't even know what the word means, they just think it makes them sound knowledgeable when they use it."